


The Real War (oneshot)

by goddamnitaisha



Category: Naruto
Genre: Jiraiya born again, M/M, Orochimaru is immortal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 06:04:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14826752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddamnitaisha/pseuds/goddamnitaisha
Summary: Immortal shinobi Orochimaru spent decades alone, but now meets a reborn Jiraiya who grows up to hunt him again as ANBU. Orochimaru does what he could not do before: let himself be caught, and he guides Jiraiya to becoming a writer.





	The Real War (oneshot)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monophobian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monophobian/gifts).



“I’m back,” Jiraiya says in Orochimaru’s dream, and Orochimaru wakes up. He sits up with a jolt. The words echo so clear and vivid, they make his soul tremble.

He clutches his chest with his hand. His fingers are as thin as spider-legs because he is old. He feels old. He breathes out and tries to ground himself.  _Jiraiya is dead, and he has been dead for a long time. I cannot do anything. I’m home._ There is only a strip of light under the door to orientate himself by. There is no one beside him in bed. He still feels the mattress and its cold.

It’s been decades since his last partner. The last one he was invested in was Sasuke. After him, the partners just had bodies but no faces. And Orochimaru had begun to feel bad for kissing them on the mouth that never said anything interesting. Sex shouldn’t make him feel bad, so he had just stopped, and somehow that was OK.

He lies down again, puts the back of his wrist over his eyes. He exhales with a tremble and he wills himself to sleep again. But he can’t, so he gets up in the middle of the night to make himself anise tea. He forgets about the incident for 12 years.

(…)

_The ninja world is the same and different,_  Orochimaru thinks as he hides behind a tree. He feels watched. He is in the water from the waist down, and naked. The casual morning swim in the pond is not so casual any more. 

Boruto’s grandson is Hokage and his Special Forces are still looking for Orochimaru. They supposedly think he might have some lingering form of affection for Konoha to help them in their pointless wars. They search the area for him. 

But Orochimaru folds his hands to makes a fully clothed water clone, and sends it away in another direction. The rubbish ninjas fall for it, but it does not solve his problem.

Orochimaru still feels watched.

He uses the Shadow-snake-hands jutsu to pull a young boy into the water. He turns to the direction of the splash. 

Among the wiry bushes is now a drenched preteen.

“Who are you,” says Orochimaru.

The boy says his name but to Orochimaru it sounds like static noise from the television. The kid pushes his wet hair out of his face. White hair.

“Why were you spying on me?”

“You’re Lord Orochimaru, right? Right! Train me, I want to become your pupil!”

“Why?”

“To stop the wars.”

“The wars never stop.”

“You stop wars!”

“I stop the pointless ones. Besides, I don’t accept any pupils. It was of no use to trail behind the ANBU to seek me out. Leaving Konoha without permission is a crime. Go back.”

But the boy doesn’t leave. They have an argument and Orochimaru leaves instead.

(…)

The boy does not leave him alone for ten years. He grows out to become leader of the Special Forces that are occasionally tasked to hunt Orochimaru down to get information. Sometimes they get it. Sometimes the target escapes.

There is only so much avoiding Orochimaru can do before he feels as if he on the run, and he dislikes that. He has fewer easy tidbits of info that will satisfy the ANBU. Soon the Hokage will want more detailed intel.

He is right, and the hunter comes back. He appears when Orochimaru does not expect him, late afternoon and at the back of a hangar of tanks and airships Orochimaru owns indirectly. He has a big poof of white hair now, and an even bigger tendency the wrong thing. His eyes are black and infected with war. The disease swirls inside of him. He has seen too much, and when he attacks, it is with the intent to harm.

Orochimaru feels like he is being blamed for not training him as a kid, blamed for rejecting him, blamed for this obsession. “Stop, Jiraiya,” he says, sliding to the wall so fast in their battle, that the sand on the ground jumps up like water. Three kunai lodge themselves into the wall of the hangar on the place he was a second ago.

“What did you call me?”

“Stop,” Orochimaru says, dodging the assault of a toad tongue.

“Like hell I will. I’ve almost got you!”

“I will give myself to you freely if you let me guide you.”

Hesitation.

“I underssstand. You have all this darkness inside you, which frightens you. You seek someone who can train you. That someone is not me.”

Jiraiya seems to hate that answer.

Orochimaru very slowly straightens up. He reaches out. “Come with me, Jiraiya-kun. I know a small house by the sea. Far away from all the fighting.”

“The important fights are at the capitals.”

“Wrong. Ideologies are carried out everywhere, the battlefield is a last resort. Mass killings solve nothing. The real fight is somewhere else – in people’s minds. It’s their view of the world.”

Jiraiya does not take his hand. He comes closer though, and then he joins Orochimaru on the journey to the house by the sea.

“How do you do it? Mass mind alteration?”

Orochimaru smiles. He asks questions back. “Would you do it? If you had the chance, would you change people’s worldview with a button click?”

“But how?!” Jiraiya asks. 

(…)

After days of traveling, Orochimaru opens the door to the cabin. It’s sandy and sunny and exactly as he left it. He puts Jiraiya down on the chair of the desk by the window.

Jiraiya looks puzzled.

“You write.” Orochimaru puts an open notebook in front of him.

“About what?”

“About whatever troubles you and needs to change. And how. It does not have to be good text. Your eyes are ink black of the war, so put that ink on the page. We will talk about it later.”

It takes Jiraiya three years to write the war out of him, most of the war. He also reads all the political books in the cabin. They’re almost all by the same writer. He likes the ideas and he can relate better to those than to Orochimaru-sama’s worldview.

Orochimaru is just around, doing meditation in crossed legs on the beach, or new jutsu developing, or sunbathing in summer, or staring at the snowflakes at winter. Its almost like he is waiting for Jiraiya to come up with something new. Something revolutionary.

Jiraiya struggles to find it. The thoughts on ‘productive war’ fade. He find himself becoming a pacifist, because he now is afraid of himself. He thinks often on what he did to become this powerful this fast, and he fears what he can  _do_ when he goes back into that dark mindset.

“Another day without writing anything?” Orochimaru asks as he comes back from the sea.

Jiraiya hums.

Orochimaru takes a towel to dry his black hair. His expression is tired, as if he is tired of life.

That expression wears down Jiraiya too. “I am to doubt. I don’t think writing is for me. Why bother.”

Orochimaru picks a piece of paper from the floor. It is crumpled up. 

“That’s nothing.”

Orochimaru folds it open. The paper rustles.

Jiraiya says nothing.

“It is a poem about my butt.”

“Yeah, well, ignore it.” Jiraiya is embarrassed and stands up. He wants to take the paper away.

Orochimaru’s eyes twinkle. It is the first laugh he makes. “Fu fu fu…” he says. “I think you’re onto something new.”

“With this? You think so?”

“Overcoming war happens not on the field, but in the minds. People need showing how to live life without war.”

“I don’t know, Orochi.”

Lord Orochimaru smiles, and he sits down on the writing desk. He puts one foot on the arm of Jiraiya’s chair. “I like it.”

“Hmm.”

Orochimaru flattens the piece of paper on his thigh. He strokes the wrinkles away. His fingers are no longer like spider legs, but full from the good meals Jira has been cooking for him. “I want to see more texts like this.”

“I will try. But my writers block-… that’s why it is called a block.”

Orochimaru weaves his fingers into Jiraiya’s white hair at the back of his neck. And he pulls him down.

Jiraiya sits back down in the writer’s seat, but that is not what Orochimaru meant.

“I offer you some ideas,” Orochimaru says. 

Jiraiya looks at him, waiting.

Orochimaru pushes their mouths together in a first kiss. It is soft. It is gentle, and a natural progression of their companionship.

Jiraiya finds himself smiling. “Let’s hear it.” He makes Orochimaru vocal. But they are at the beach house, so no one is around to think the sound a hindrance.

Jiraiya clicks his pen. He makes his ideas known to the world, and it changes the discourse of everyday households and then everyday politics. 

Orochimaru sleeps soundly again. Well–when they get to sleep eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> Please please leave comments such as "I liked this!", because those make me keep writing more fics. I spent an hour and a half typing this on my crappy phone. Tell me if you like it!


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